David Lassman/The Post-StandardFrank Valletta Sr., who turned 100 Saturday, with his blue ribbon-winning latch hook rug from last year's new York State Fair - and several other rugs he'd made in recent years.

Not long ago, Frank Valletta Sr. got a little bored. He found some paper and sketched a map of the Solvay neighborhood he knew as a child. He drew more than 250 boxes to represent every house on every street, and he started identifying families, one by one, that lived in those homes.

The map portrayed the village as he saw it in his mind, in detail, from the 1920s.

On Saturday, Frank Sr. turned 100. He joined a select group: According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there were roughly 71,000 American centenarians as of December 2010. Yet a century is a long journey for the human body, and not everyone who reaches 100 does it with all systems intact.

Frank Sr.? His systems are just fine.

While he's a Solvay guy through and through, he lives now in Clay with his son and daughter-in-law, Frank Jr. and Mary Valletta. Last year, Frank Sr. made a beautiful latch hook rug of floral design, with more than 15,000 pieces. His family entered it in the state fair seniors division.

The judges gave him a blue ribbon. Frank Sr. will compete again this year.

Imagine: A defending state fair champion who was born 100 years ago in a shack near the old Solvay salt yards. Frank Sr. remembers when his father loaded salt onto barges for the Erie Canal. He remembers salt yard workers cutting blocks of ice from the frozen canal, then storing them in a sawdust-insulated warehouse so families could buy ice in the summer.

A gifted baseball and football player, Frank Sr. wasn’t a swimmer — although he often went to picnics at a place called Pleasant Beach, where friends and relatives would swim in Onondaga Lake. “The lake was beautiful,” said Frank Sr., who watched over the decades as it turned into a cesspool — and now watches, with cautious hope, as contaminated sludge is finally pumped out of the bottom of the lake.

About the only concession he makes to age is that he no longer drives. Frank Sr. is supposed to use a walker, because his doctors want him to have protection if he falls. He grudgingly keeps the walker by his favorite chair, where he works at puzzle books or watches the New York Yankees.

When he gets up, he grabs the walker and basically carries it with him, to keep it from getting in his way.

At 98 — writing longhand — he sat down and wrote a detailed autobiography. His family turned it into a 27-page book. During an interview last week, Frank Sr. autographed a copy, then removed his Social Security card from his wallet.

It’s an original Social Security card. He signed it in 1936. The firm signatures, from then and now, match exactly.

“I had the Lord with me,” Frank Sr. said, explaining his vitality. “He guided me all through these years.”

His parents, he said, modeled an unbending work ethic: After starting as a laborer, his dad kept getting promoted until he was the boss of the salt yards. Frank Sr.’s mother was a neighborhood midwife. She delivered Frank Sr. by herself, in her own home. Hours later, when her husband and older children got home, she was already fixing dinner in the kitchen.

In last week’s conversation, Frank Sr. was relentlessly upbeat. Only one topic brought him to tears, and he said they were tears of joy:

He described meeting Betty Bianchi Valletta, his wife of 74 years. She died, at 93, in 2009.

As a young man, Frank Sr. held a job at a corner grocery. Betty was the owner’s younger sister. Frank Sr. fell for her, but faced a major problem: Her family left Catholicism and converted when a Pentecostal minister arrived in Solvay. Frank Sr. knew he’d catch some heat if he made the same decision in a very Catholic town. But he also knew he wanted to marry Betty.

He made his choice. His father-in-law baptized him into his new faith in Nine Mile Creek. “It was cold,” said Frank Sr., who went on to raise two sets of twins with his wife: There was Frank Jr. and William, and Robert and Betty Jane.

Frank Sr. supported his family by driving a bread truck, which led to a job as a Millbrook supervisor. At state fair time, he’d supply bread to midway vendors. About 50 years ago, he was approached by Tony Santillo, operator of several state fair food stands.

Family photoThe wedding photo of Betty and Frank Valletta Sr.: They'd been married 74 years when Betty died in 2009.

Santillo wanted a better alternative than using hamburger buns with Italian sausage. Frank Sr. heard him out and went to the Solvay Bakery. He began supplying Santillo’s with thousands of pieces of Italian bread, a trend Frank Sr. said was soon embraced by other stands.

He is too humble to say it, but the upshot is clear: Frank Sr. played a major role in creating what is the defining meal at the state fair.

His children have their own beliefs on why he’s aged so well. They say, as a husband and father, he rarely became angry. He didn’t drink or smoke. He loved his wife, cared for his kids and was happy with what God gave him.

In total, he’s had about 36,500 days on the planet. Put them together, judge the pattern, and there’s not much doubt: